OldStand: SPIN, November 1986
Take our ink-stained hands and join us at the OldStand, where Jon McMillan goes to remind everyone what an honest-to-goodness music magazine is supposed to look like.
A paint-by-numbers Iggy Pop feature/interview gets the November 1986 cover love (first interview in four years = same interview as four years ago), but it's a 10-page slice of post-gonzo journalism that steals the show. To celebrate the 100-year anniversary of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, original punks Legs "Sawyer" McNeil and Richard "Huckleberry" Hell are dispatched to the Mississippi river in twin inflatable rafts, in search of -- well, it's not exactly clear what they're searching for. Freedom? America? More cigarettes?
Today the river offers no relief or anticipation. It is getting more and more civilized. Abandoned houses with their first floors submerged in water pop up out of the river, casting a gloomy pall over the place. Normally, on this stretch of river, the water would be alive with motorboats and water-skiers, families or inborn mutant children mucking up the place, but even though the sun is shining and the trees gently rustling in the breeze, the assault of the outraged river on the tacky resort homes creates an eerie mood. It's as if nature took its revenge at being spoiled for man's pleasure. Still, as if to defy the mighty river, the rapid-fire delivery of a television game show host breaks the overwhelming quiet.
Bet you weren't expecting that -- I know I wasn't. As with many of these "searching for America on the Mississippi" pieces, this adventure ends in a mixture of sweetness and defeat, as the boys fall some 225 miles short of their mark (Memphis, TN, as if that mattered). No surprise there. Still, it's a welcome respite from the usual music-mag fare, and an excellent read. One more quote for ya, but first, the cover:
Is there something wrong with my loving being here so much? I feel like an adulterer. Escaping the city and ambition and responsibilities. My wife calls me a big baby. Humans brainwash you. But humans and families and jobs aren't the world. We're just another of the world's feelings. Just dirt that talks. Our job is to speak for the dirt. Stand up for the mud.
The review section is another highlight, but not necessarily for the reasons you'd expect (breathless hype for duds; short-sighted panning of a classic). Graceland ("This is Paul Simon's greatest work") gets the feature spot, alongside Talking Heads True Stories ("This is not the silly, mindless, blinders-on shortsightedness so prevalent in the Regan era, it is a genuine prescription to mellow out and dig the present") and Crowded House's debut ("The best record I've heard this year"). But it was two obscure, back-to-back Byron Coley reviews that caught my eye. Coley goes the abstract route in (what I believe is) his excoriation of the Woodentops' Giant ("He didn't have any ideas about sex at all. He was like a big stupid 8-year-old or something"). It's basically a precursor of the flash-fiction gamesmanship that exasperated many early readers of Pitchfork. But then Corey turns his eye to two Panther Burns' EPs and spits this gem:
Unscramble yr priorities, label weakos. Gustavo Falco and the unapproachable Panther Burns are flaring like a big pile of phosphorous, and the shadows they cast on the wall are a unique, twisted, flickering history of post-Korean War deep-South bellyroll.
Amazing how, some 22 years after the fact, that review still explodes off the page. Like all great reviews, it reads like a secret missive from the those-in-the-know to those-who-want-to-know. Seldom have I been so disappointed by a warmed-over rockabilly band. But it's cool to see guys like Coley explore and expand the limitations of the form in real time.
What makes a good review?
Below: Music in Action takes on Swaggart et al, Michelob Light's advertising agency tries to make you laugh, fails, and instructions on how to get on the first passenger flight into space. Book your tickets soon -- the flight leaves on October 12, 1992!
This is why you shouldn't get your science news from a music magazine.
Which Wham! tape was it? Does anybody know this guy?
"Rock is not inspired by the devil!"
Punk as Huck.
I hope they fired the media buyer who put this in SPIN.
Warning: if you have a tattoo you cannot get a job.
"Hey look, I get it from all sides. I don't need it from my tape."
And the award for "Least Insightful Sentence of 1986 goes to..."
Posted at 3:11 PM in OldStand
Tags: Iggy Pop
I almost didn't recognize Iggy Pop with a jacket on. I'm pretty sure that's the only photo of him that I've seen where his nipples weren't showing.
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I'd really like to see that review of "Graceland" you mentioned. Possible?
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I love that the Cro-Mags are on the cover. Can we have the old SPIN back, please?
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@ oh.
Only because I love you...
by Glenn O'Brien and Roger Egbert
Graceland is a pilgrimage. On the title track the singer heads for the Presley estate in Memphis, filled with faith, trailed by doubt, led by hope. And pretty soon Graceland is more than the palace of the rock 'n' roll Sun King, it is a state of mind that borders on heaven at the intersection of the road to enlightenment and the road to ruin. Graceland is the Promised Land, build on landfill. It's the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold grown from the wise investment of chump change. It's a great beauty built from the eyes of a million beholders. It's a distraction turned into a quest. It's the search for the grail as an excuse for a joy ride.
This is Paul Simon's greatest work. It's a strangely beautiful album of multinational, urbane country music. Most of the tracks are played by South African musicians and overdubbed by Simon and a variety of American musicians, notably guitarist Adrian Belew. Simon just happened to bump into the South African sound a few years ago, was struck by its pop beauty, and pursued it to its source. He liked its simplicity and its positive, joyful sound. It reminded him of the innocent rock 'n' roll of the '50s. By the time he arrived in Johannesburg in 1985, he was well aware that the music of that country was a gold mine of rhythm melody, and poetry, untapped by the outside world.
South African music is related to African musics that we have been exposed to. Some of King Sunny Ade's songs share rhythmic roots with South African styles (and an affection for the pedal steel guitar -- King Sunny's steel man Demola Adepoju is a featured player here). And fands of Malcolm McLaren's South AFrican Collaborations on the Duck Rock and Swamp Thing albums will hear familiar beats and vocal styles. Graceland is, however, an impressive intruduction to the music of South Africa. But it's still very much a Paul Simon album. Simon writes with an easy power here, and he performs with sensitivity, grace and wit.
Rock 'n' rollers may be resistant to the idea that Paul Simon can really show them something. But as rich and famous as the man is, I do think he's vastly underrated as a writer and musician. The man is one of the few songwriters we have who is a true first-class poet -- up there with Bob D., Neil Y., Lou R., and Lenny C. Simon writes lines that are purely sublime:
It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
And he writes lines that are pure hip mirth:
I said, 'Hey Senorita, that's astute'
I said, 'Why don't we get together
And call ourselves an institute.'
[Typist's note: is that a misquote?]
And what's more extraordinary is Simon's way of melding cool wit and electric profundity in the space of a few lines. It's like those old country songs, from Hank Williams to Elroy Blunt, that make you want to laugh till you cry yourself off the bar stool.
This is country music. It's the satellite bounce meeting the minds from Nashville to Swoeto and back. It's the township jive running in Cajun overdrive. It's Dixified East L.A. Chicano lyric poetry that rocks like a voodoo queen's pelvis on automatic pilot.
In addition to the distinguished South African players here -- Tao Ea Matsekha, Genera. M.D. Shirinda and the Gaza Sisters, and the Boyoyo Boys Band, to name the principals -- there are als tracks featuring the bayou zydeco sound of Rockin' Dopsie and the Twisters, and the party-hearty sound of eminent Angeleno rockers Los Lobos.
Music is a universal language. That's a cliche only when applied to cliched music. And this is universal country music in that it's got the rhythms of the earth in it. They say mathematics is the language of the spheres, but music is the language of love and the algebra of the pleasure and intelligence that unites all brothers and sisters of good feeling.
Graceland isn't a political statement about South Africa. It's a cultural balm mixed from the roots of South Africa and the fruits of American cities and all the branches of growth blowing in the rhythm of the free wind circling the planet. Living well is the best revenge and having fun is what big chiefs everywhere call "powerful medicine."
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You should read this interview (a few years old) w/ some dude from Los Lobos about the recording of Graceland and how Paul Simon is the world's biggest prick...
http://www.jambase.com/Articles/Story.aspx?StoryID=9391&pagenum=3
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i fucking love iggy pop and i dont care who knows it!
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That Memorex ad rules so fucking hard. Chortles.
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The Woodentops' Giant is one of the most underrated records ever, if you ask me -- a groundbreaking, near-perfect alt-pop record that's been unjustly forgotten, pretty much. It was weird and whispery, mostly acoustic and percussive, with big hooks, puff-pastry harmonies and a groove like a freight train. Nothing had sounded that way before, and it's hard to find bands since that sound much like them.
Giant was near-impossible to get for a long time, but now it's now on iTunes -- if you haven't heard it, check it out.
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hey larry dickman, just wait till elijah wood does that biopic. then you can see elijah wood's nipples. I know that is exciting you while you read this.
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dear ??? CAN I HAVE A DATE WITH A WOMAN 24/7 ??? as i'm bob dylan''s greatest bbc radio request writer: david miedzianik rainmanhallelujah@hotmail.com
cyber-cafe near EUSTON STATION: LONDON: PS: i'm fed-up with going to concerts by myself:
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dear ??? CAN I HAVE A DATE WITH A WOMAN 24/7 ??? as i'm bob dylan''s greatest bbc radio request writer: david miedzianik rainmanhallelujah@hotmail.com
cyber-cafe near EUSTON STATION: LONDON: PS: i'm fed-up with going to concerts by myself:
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dear ??? CAN I HAVE A DATE WITH A WOMAN 24/7 ??? as i'm bob dylan''s greatest bbc radio request writer: david miedzianik rainmanhallelujah@hotmail.com
cyber-cafe near EUSTON STATION: LONDON: PS: i'm fed-up with going to concerts by myself:
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